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Stop by Littered With Books, just one of a small but delightful collection of independent bookstores in Singapore.

(Courtesy AsiaRooms.com)

If you're planning a trip to Singapore and would like to see the city-state beyond its usual tourist hotspots, check out AsiaRooms.com's list of 50alternative things to do in Singapore. Here are 10 of our favorites.

You've got questions? We've got answers! Google crunched its data from the past year and unearthed the top 10 travel search terms for their annual Year in Search analysis. One huge takeaway from the roundup: Travelers want to know how they can travel more—and do it on the cheap. We'll do a New Year's toast to that!

It's crunch time! Bloomberg recently released its list of cities around the globe that will be the most crowded in the year 2025. The top five? Hong Kong; Salvador, Brazil; Mexico City; São Paulo; and Singapore. All the more reason not to put off traveling to these destinations any longer! Bump them up on your bucket list instead, using some of our favorite travel tips for each town as guidance:

This article was written by Milda Ratkelyte, the travel community manager at AsiaRooms.com. She is currently exploring Asia and capturing the best moments in stories, photos, and films.

Penang is a small tropical island connected to the northwest coast of Malaysia where, as one says, "the weather never changes so everyone talks about food instead." The island's fertile land and seas combined with a mixture of Malay, Chinese (mostly Hokkien with a smaller group of Cantonese and Teochew as well as the Straights-born Chinese known as Peranakans) and Indian cultures holds Penang as Asia's top city voted by CNN and the New York Times for street food for several years now. On top of that, Penang is also one of the safest places in Asia to try street food—the competition among the street vendors is so high that any dip in quality of the food is not tolerated here. During a recent trip to Penang, I rolled up my sleeves and hit the island's most famous hawker centers to find out for myself what all the fuss is about!

For 1.2 billion Muslims, today marks the end of a month of fasting, prayer, and reflection. It's also the beginning of the much-awaited celebration known as Eid-ul-Fitr.

As far as Muslim celebrations go, this is the event of the year, a time for feasting, mingling, and exchanging gifts. In the morning, worshippers put on their best clothes, eat a small meal, and go to the mosque for a congregational prayer and sermon. But the types of celebration and food that follow vary from country to country, an amalgam of traditions, cultural festivities, and national pastimes.

Similar to low-cost, transportation companies like Megabus, Asian budget chain Tune Hotels uses a "demand-based pricing system," where early online bookers can get rooms for as little as $3 a night (room prices vary for walk-ins, but run about $25). The first property opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in spring of 2007, followed by an outpost in Kota Kinabalu (in Sabah, a state on the island of Borneo in East Malaysia) this year. In December, five more hotels debut in Malaysia, including in Penang and Kuching.